Who let the cat out? meow, meow ....

We have two cats.  We got them when the boys were small, and right away one cat bonded with one boy, and the other, the other.  So I'll call them Cat 1 and Cat 2.

Yesterday afternoon about 4:00pm I got the following text from Wife while I was at work:

I can't find Cat 1. My best guess is that he got out when I came home this a.m. w/ my arms full of groceries. I heard the door not latch but by the time I could put groceries down & return to latch it, it was 8" open. I didn't realize I was missing him til I did an immed cat check & couldn't find him. Usually if he gets out he wants rt back in, & by now he'd be howling for food. I've looked for him repeatedly outside, shaking food. No luck. I guess I'll just have to hope he really isn't lost & will come in when he's hungry enuf but I'm very worried.

Oh, just bloody wonderful.  There are so many points here that infuriate me I hardly know where to begin. Cat 1 will wander outside because he's curious, but he doesn't bolt the door; so Wife left the door abandoned longer than she says. This has happened before and I have explained strenuously that the door sometimes won't latch unless you jiggle it as you walk through, so obviously she didn't bother to remember that.  Her "cat check" was not "immediate" or she wouldn't feel compelled to use the words "I didn't realize I was missing him [un]til ...."  How much time went by?  Hours?  And her plan is to "just hope"?  I also know she doesn't really like Cat 1, so a small corner of my brain wonders if she let him escape "accidentally on purpose" but probably not.  In general she is kinder to animals than to people.  I also couldn't quite tell if she was asking me to swoop in and wave a magic wand to make it all better.

I went to no effort to disguise how disgusted I was, and wrote back:

You realize that's inexcusable, right? You could have set down the groceries on the front stoop and you could have paid attention to the door. What the fuck do you expect me to do about it? 

Her answer:

I don't expect you to do anything. I thot I HAD paid attn to the door. I will merely keep trying to get him in w/ food. Usually he's yowling for it by now, so my guess is he'll come in when he's hungry, which should be any time now.

And mine:

Meanwhile you can be walking around outside of the house looking under bushes. Or looking for bodies in streets. You can't just assume he'll come to you.

WTF took all the time btw "this morning" & now? Just waiting passively for him?

Don't waste time answering. Just go look.

Of course she did take the time to text me back, at some length, explaining all the steps she had already taken and how of course she hadn't been passive all day.  Right.  Whatever.  When I was about to leave work to come home I texted her:

Leaving soon. Hope Cat 1 is back. If he is still missing, it is probably better if you don't speak to me til he's back. Except for business, of course, or plans on how we could find him.

He wasn't back.  When I got home Wife got a large flashlight (hoping the light might cause his eyes to shine, in case he were under a bush or something) and we walked -- not together, I should add! -- up and down our block and neighboring ones, peering under cars and inside bushes.  [It will be obvious from this that we don't live in one of those parts of the country where several hours outside in this time of year would mean he had already frozen to death.]  When our paths crossed after maybe an hour I took the flashlight from her and told her to go back to the house: find out how to put a "missing cat" ad in the local paper, and make up some "missing cat" flyers to post in the neighborhood.  I kept looking.

The looking was fruitless, but she came back in a while with fifteen flyers, describing Cat 1 and offering a $200 reward for his return.  "Two hundred dollars?" I asked.  She answered, "Most people won't claim it -- they'll just say 'I'm glad you got your cat back.' But if somebody wants it, I'll find a way to scrape it together rather than have to tell Son 1 I lost his cat."

Wow, said a small voice in an irreverent corner of my brain.  She's taking some actual responsibility.  Good sign.  Shaddup, Hosea ... don't waste your time thinking (ummm) catty thoughts about Wife when there's a genuine problem to address.

Wife trudged all around the neighborhood and put up every last one of the signs.  By then it was getting late.  I offered to hang around outsdie for a while longer just to wait and watch, but it was largely because I didn't want to be in the house with Wife.  But I did suggest one other thing she could do before packing it in for the night: it might not help, but it couldn't hurt and it might help her own anxiety.  I've mentioned that Wife used to be a Wiccan; so I suggested that, if she hadn't given all that up, she cast a spell for his safe return.  And sure enough, she unpacked all her magical gear (none of which has seen the light of day in years) and did exactly that.

No sign of Cat 1 by the time we went to bed.  At that point, I told Wife, it's most likely either that he is already dead (hit by a car, eaten by a dog) or that he was scooped up by someone local who was feeling friendly and brought him inside for the night.  If the latter, they'll probably see the signs soon and call Wife's cell phone.  If the former, ... well I guess they won't.  Wife is supposed to be placing an ad in the paper today, to run for a couple of days.  I guess we'll see what happens.

In my initial proposal for the divorce I offered Wife the right of first refusal on custody of the cats.  I don't think I can still offer that, because it seems clear she can't be trusted to look after them.  Of course, we may at this point be talking about only a single cat ....

One step forward, one step back

Or maybe not so fast.

Debbie and I exchanged a couple of e-mails after lunch -- warm, friendly, discursive.  I began to expand on some of the things we had talked about, in kind of the way that I used to write to D only without all the romantic floweriness because after all we're just friends.

Debbie put up with two of these from me (sending one similar reply herself between them) and then a couple of mornings ago said simply:

Hosea,

OK.  I've put [a date a month from now] on my calendar.  We can touch base that week to confirm or reschedule, if needed, and decide on a restaurant.  In the meantime, it feels to me like we have talked our discussion topics through to their natural pause points, as least for now.  I appreciate all your comments and insights.  As you point out, it's not always easy to see from the inside what is easily apparent to others, and so it seems that we have been teachers and mirrors for each other, as well as enjoyable company.

Be well,
Debbie

Too much, too fast?  Looks like.  Slow down, Hosea.  And back off, just a bit.


Sigh.

I wonder if I should be concerned by her remark that some things we ourselves don't see are nonetheless easily apparent to others ...?  Probably I'm being pretty transparent.

Sigh.

Wife's sleepover -- for real!

The boys are both back at boarding school, after the holidays.  My new boss (we just reorganized at work) told me that his new boss is in town, and would I like to join the team for dinner?  Sure ... they are bound to be better company than Wife.  So I texted her that I'd be home late and eating dinner out.

Then at 7:00 pm she texted me:

Going out to dinner w/ a friend. Might be home late. If I'm up too late, I'll sleep in the guest room, so don't worry.

OK, so she's not going to be at home either.  Fine, whatever.  I didn't really understand what she was saying about a "guest room" -- we don't have one -- but I didn't think about it much.  I figured she meant she'd go sleep in the boys' room, which she does anyway these days if they are gone.  Better than sleeping with me, I guess.  We both like it better.

I didn't think much more about it until after I was finally home and she wasn't here yet ... and then at 10:40 pm she texted me:

I'm heading for guest room. Nite.

And then it clicked.  She meant she'd be sleeping in his guest room!  Which of course probably meant that she'd be fucking him and just didn't want to say so.  OK, now I get it.

Gosh, I wonder who she's with?

Fortunately or not, Wife never logs out of OKCupid.  So I checked her account and found a conversation yesterday with someone brand-new ... I mean someone she just conversed with for the first time yesterday ... that ended with "Can I buy you dinner? Here's my number."  I have no proof that this is the same guy she's spending the night with, but it sounds suggestive.

Quick work, babe.

Lunch with Debbie

Last Friday I had lunch with Debbie.  It was the first time we had talked or seen each other at length in many years, and it was delightful.

We talked about our divorces: hers is now done, but it took a few years to get there and she emphasized that sometimes it was just a question of putting one foot in front of the other and trusting it would all turn out.  She added that it was emotionally very difficult -- partly because she was grieving the loss of her marriage, and partly because she was doing a ruthless self-assessment of what she had contributed to the break-up.  It sounded like a lot of work, and made me wonder in the back of my mind how I can feel so unruffled by the whole thing in comparison.  Am I just that much more callous a person?  (My current theory is that I've already done a lot of that churning and gnashing of teeth in this very blog, and so have gotten a lot of it out of my system.)

Debbie asked when I am planning to move out, reminding me that a lot of things won't change until I do.  Of course she is absolutely right -- you've told me the same thing -- and of course I have stalled on that point.  So the next day I took a good bit of time to try to figure out a budget for moving out: what would I have to send Wife as interim support so she didn't give up on the mortgage, and could I live on what was left?  Saturday I thought I had it all worked out; then Sunday I realized I had left out a big chunk and I have some more thinking to do.  But back to the lunch.

We talked about our children.  I gave her thumbnail sketches of the two boys (and she confirmed that she had, indeed, moved on to a new job before either one was born).  She told me that her daughter (whom I remember as a cute little girl) is now in graduate school.

And we talked about life after divorce.  She said she has been starting to think about what her future relationships might look like, and specifically that she has come to realize there is no need for them to look anything like a marriage.  (Gosh, ya think?)  I seconded this: sure, maybe when you are raising kids they need the stability provided by a normal marriage.  But afterwards?  I encouraged her that there is no reason not to cultivate a relationship purely around what it truly has to offer, and not around what you think it ought to be.

In some ways I felt that the conversation carried a gentle subtext, "Don't let your fantasies run away with you. Sure, Hosea, it's great to see you again and all that; but we haven't been part of each other's lives in well over a decade, and don't forget that."  But in other ways I'm not so sure.  When the conversation flagged, I just sat and looked at her -- partly to see what she would do.  What she did was to sit comfortably and look straight back at me, eyes to eyes.  And smile.

Towards the end of the lunch, she mentioned that she has applied to a program which means she'll be moving out of town no later than summer, to the big city a couple of hours from here.  Gosh, I said, we just now bump into each other again and you're moving?  What a pity that we didn't have this lunch a couple of years ago.  No, she said, I was in a lot more tumult a couple of years ago when I was right in the teeth of the divorce.  I wouldn't have been ready for a lunch like this then.

And as we left the restaurant she gave me a card.  She had written out a message one of her friends had written for her early in her own divorce, words that she said hadn't meant a lot to her then but that she had grown into.  I read it as I walked back to my car.

It is his time, when the sun begins to shine more brightly and the stars twinkle more often, in the middle of his years.

When he allows himself to see his own desires and feed upon what nurtures him best.

It is his time, to grow and change that suits his soul, that suits his mind, that suits his body.

When he finally acknowledges that the past is done, and the future is of his own design, and he takes gentle care in nurturing his own self in ways that suit just him.

I think we are going to do this again in a while.